I will never be as good at ukulele as this guy

...and I'm ok with that.

Blogging instead of sleeping

A few great cover songs of 2011

Cee Lo Green covers Band of Horses - No one's gonna love you


Karmin covers Chris Brown ft. Lil Wayne, Busta Rhymes - Look at me now


Dum Dum Girls cover The Smiths - That light that never goes out


The Black Keys cover Buddy Holly - Dearest

Any Woman's Blues

Oh boy. This dating thing is all fizzy lemonade while you're not that emotionally involved; when it's all: "let's go for coffee! Yeah, I like Peep Show too. Oh, you like dark chocolate? Yeah white chocolate shouldn't even be CALLED chocolate". Once you've made yourself vulnerable though - this is not a euphemism, by the way, I haven't so much as smooched one bloke - and put your heart out there on that line, the pain of a million remembered heartbreaks comes roaring back. The pain that brings all your insecurities out of hiding and returns you back to that angsty teenage girl wailing to Tori Amos in her bedroom all over again.

Yup, it's time to put on some sad songs and wallow like a hippo.




Best comment under an Elliot Smith video: "everytime i feel depressed, i listen to this song. then i feel more depressed; it's awesome"


(worth repeating. *Sigh*)

And so it is...

The end of another year, eh? Nothing quite like it to make you feel a little melancholy/sentimental/panicked at the unstoppable passage of time all at once.

2010 - if it had a slogan, it would surely be The Future is Now! Unfortunately, hover boards and inter-galactic travel are still some way off (despite Richard Branson's best efforts).

For me, 2010 was a year packing some pretty hefty ch-ch-changes.

I got back together with a boy and in April we moved in together - in South London (let's not revisit the controversy). My lovely friend Gem and I were foiled in our churro quest in Barcelona, but I did discover a pharmacy that dispenses lollies as medicine. I watched a 20-20 match in St. Lucia and got mugged in Soufrière. I quit my stifling corporate job and bought a ticket back home to Australia, minus the boy. I shipped my Pashley (and other less important items) halfway around the world. I spent 3 happy months travelling around country Victoria, working on farms and enjoying the combination of dirty hands and complete lack of responsibility. I wrote my first short story. I caught up with old school friends and realised how things change, and don't change. I signed on for the dole, heavy with Working Class Guilt (not quite enough guilt for me to turn down the offer of money for nuttin', however).

And most happily, I witnessed my little bro - one of these days I'm going to have to get used to the idea that my "little bro" is a man, but that day has not yet come - get married. I got myself a sister! Two of them, in fact. We've already been shopping together and collaboratively given my mum a makeover, so as soon as we have our first bitch-fight over a "borrowed" dress I'm pretty sure it's official.

Just kidding, Stace n' Anny!

Ephemeral stuff I enjoyed this year:

Contra by Vampire Weekend. Boy, those fresh-faced preppy boys know their way around a crazy happy toon. Especially the joyful goose chase of Cousins.

Mad Men (series 1-3). TV was where it's at in 2010, man. Mad Men drew me and a bunch of other people in with its combination of understated acting, finely tuned writing and highly polished visual style. Refreshing and slightly bitter, like a good G&T.

30 Rock just keeps getting better and better, which is a relief - so many comedy series seem to cram an entire back catalogue of jokes into the first series and tail off noticably after that. Tina Fey, I salute you and your deceptively cute, quick-fire quirkiness.

The comedy of Eric Laempart. What a weird-lookin' spidery-horse man he is.

Latitude festival, a very chilled out festival in Suffolk, on which the sun uncharacteristically shone and shone. The could-have-been-tailor-made-for-me 2010 line-up was as good as it's ever gonna get, as far as I'm concerned.

High Violet, by The National. Really, anything he does with that deep sad voice is fine by me.

Moon. Yup, it was released in 2009, but I didn't get to see it until this year and it was awesome - a properly scary, claustrophobic, plot-driven film with great characters and a big idea behind it - just as great sci-fi should be (see Alien, Bladerunner, 2001, Silent Running, Gattaca).

I Speak Because I Can, by Laura Marling. This girl has a seriously gorgeous voice that belies her age (she was born in 1990, which is surely impossible or maybe illegal?). Check Devil's Spoke and Goodbye England - my very own 2010 anthem.



See you next year, Dreamers! I for one have my fingers crossed that 2011 is a deal-maker year.

Tightrope and shoes

How cute is she?? And those shoes, man. Love.

My top five albums of 2009

Can you believe it's twenty-flippin'-ten? We is livin' in da future, man! Science, why do we not have hover-boards yet? Or teleportation? Or microscopic robots rebuilding our bodies continuously from the inside?

I was quite looking forward to those little nano-squidlets being injected into my bod to exercise me from the inside, fixing all the shit bits as they go, while I bumble on on eating too many biscuits.

Stupid science. To music!

(Click on the pics to link to my favouritest song off that album)

Lungs by Florence and the Machine



I've already gushed a waterfall of praise over this woman and her heavenly music... the love affair continues, growing more impassioned with each listen.


The First Days of Spring by Noah and the Whale



Possibly the most lovely break-up album of all time. Best listened to from start to finish if you are suffering from heart-break, otherwise you may never get past the doleful I have nothing to witness the first glimmers of sunshine showing through by Love of An Orchestra. Almost makes having a broken heart worth it (almost).


Veckatimest by Grizzly Bear



A sumptuous, complex and wide-ranging album which unfurls its charms slowly, like a flowering tea. Truly original, despite the "new Fleet Foxes" tag.


Two Dancers by Wild Beasts



Strictly speaking, I have only just listened to this properly in the last week or so, but I adore it and I can't make a list of the best albums of 2009 without including it. Swooping and stunning (while hooting and howling).


Middle Cyclone by Neko Case



Heartfelt and brave. I have a lot of respect for this lady, and I could happily listen to her honeyed gospel vocals til I'm 90, when I plan to die in my rocking chair on a porch somewhere, listening to my ipod (or future incarnation thereof).

* * * * *

Oh, and then there is this dirty little secret which I'm too ashamed to file under my top 5, even though I have listened to it a fair bit this year. I can't explain. Please don't ask me to. The lyrics are truly awful, it's "dance" music which falls under some kind of newfangled "electronic" genre, and Calvin himself is the biggest, dorkiest nerd in popular music since Moby - but damn if he doesn't put a big goofy smile on my face.

I think I just destroyed all the indie credit I'd built up in my top 5 right there, haven't I? Sh*t-sticks.

Wins my vote for funniest video on the interweb

"Alright, which of you preppies put gold dust in my fencing mask?"

Going with the Flo*

Lord knows I've gone on about how much I love a kooky female singer/songwriter on this blog.

Throw in some way-out costuming (hello Björk), occasional use of a harp ('sup Newsom), lyrics strewn with violence and otherwordly themes (Amos, I'm talking to you), delivered with utter fearlessness and total abandon, and you've got me hooked, baby.

It almost goes without saying that I was always going to love Florence & the Machine.

I haven't been this excited by a female singer since I discovered la Amos in high school (it seems I have a thing for melodramatic redheads). So excited in fact, that after I got back from her amazing gig on Monday night, I couldn't sleep for the tangle of songs in my head and the aftershock of tribal drumming in my chest. The afterimage of that flame-haired goddess striding the stage in diaphanous gown hitched up to show off her alabaster legs and gold-studded ankle boots is going to haunt me evermore.

I thought the album was absolutely blinding, but live? In person? Let's just say if the album was Florence turning it all the way up to 11, in concert she blew the needle clear off the dial. The lungs on that girl. I was in awe, torn between gawping at the pre-raphaelite vision jerking and prancing on stage and tearing myself away from the balcony for some mentalist dancing. I ended up doing an odd combination of both (I am great at prop-dancing. Chair dancing, bike dancing, balcony dancing - I'm your woman).

The crowd did that annoyingly English thing of standing still for most of the gig (despite Flo exhorting everyone to jump and howl) only to totally lose it for the final song of the encore. What's up with that, English?

It was a spell-binding night of one electric track after another, starting with the dark-eyed My Boy Builds Coffins and ending with the glorious Rabbit Heart. It was truly one of the greatest gigs I've ever had the joy of attending. And that is not an accolade I throw about lightly. If you don't believe me, ask Walks. Or Sincs (I don't actually know either of these people, by the by).

*with apologies to Sweet Nothings for stealing his headline. I couldn't think of a better one. In my defence, I didn't get much sleep.

Epic geek crush

Oh my god you guys, I just stumbled across this hottie on last.fm and I think it's true love or something 'cos I honestly feel such a connection to this guy, and I know he doesn't even know, like, who I am or that I even exist or whatever, but I just feel, like, so strongly about it that if we ever did get to meet, he is just going to know, y'know? he is just going to be like, where have you been all my life? and I'll be like, waiting for you, sweetcheeks!




Or not. But Jeremy Warmsley sure is nice to look at, isn't he? Even if he does remind me a little bit of the boy in The Shining).

Oh, and he's not bad to listen to either.

Melancholy beauty

Breaks my heart all over again. Can't wait to see these guys live.

Bestival 2009

Man, I am so happy to have left behind my twenties. I struggled through those years really not liking myself very much, not knowing myself very well, and not looking after myself as well as I should have. Thank f*ck I made it to my thirties. Yes, there are also challenges particular to this decade, but I know myself so much better now. I know that I need a certain amount of space, comfort and privacy in order to stay sane. I know that if I start feeling self-conscious, drinking more is not the solution. And if I feel like a cup of tea while everyone around me is drinking cocktails, I am just going to go ahead and get a frickin' cup of tea and I honestly couldn't give a toss what anyone else thinks about that. I LOVE TEA.



All of this is to lead up to the point of my post today, which is that I really enjoyed Bestival. Way more than I ever expected to enjoy a festival. Yes, it was dusty and dirty. Yes, there was a terribly long and painfully slow queue for the loo's in the morning. Naturally, there were noisy people who made sleeping difficult. And it was so cold at night that my bones ached even with 3 pairs of leggings under my tracksuit pants. At times it did feel like an endurance task.

All of those things are part and parcel of the festival experience, non? I knew what to expect in terms of the level of physical discomfort. I had prepared myself as best I could (toilet paper, baby wipes, antibacterial gel, wellies, my own tent). What I didn't expect was that I would spend quite so much time giggling like a school-girl with my friends; or that I would find myself dancing like an idiot in an outdoor rave one evening, deliriously sober; or that the crowd would excell even my wild imagination with their incredible costumes.



Saturday was a constant colourful parade of amazingly outfitted people, like a mass hallucination taking place in broad daylight. There were Judy Jetsons and Ziggy Stardusts and astronauts galore. There was a Lady Smurf, a group of monkeys in space outfits, a female Predator, and a man who simply wore a giant ear on the front of his t-shirt, with a sign saying "last in stock" above it (think about it). There were meteors and mars bars and milky ways and black holes. We saw several Buzz Lightyears but only one with a life-size toy grabber (he was attempting to grab one of the Thunderbirds crew when I last saw him). We were mugged by men clad in full-body (including head and face) morph suits in various hues one afternoon. They appeared like a scary hallucination and, probably sensing our fear, made their way over to hug us en-masse until the day-bed we had been reclining on collapsed under our combined weight.

I think perhaps the secret to a good festival is not to put any pressure on yourself. There were really only a few acts that we made a point of going to see - Florence and the Machine*, Friendly Fires, Jack Peñate, Fleet Foxes - and the rest of the time we wandered happily unfettered by a schedule, lazing in the sun, doing a bit of hula-hooping, but mostly checking out the utterly gob-smackingly amazing crowd. We went to bed when we were tired and/or cold, rather than forcing ourselves to stick around to see the last acts. I didn't even feel guilty laying in my tent on Sunday evening, warm at last after stuffing my sleeping bag with every piece of clothing I'd brought with me, as I was lulled to sleep by the sweet sounds of Elbow playing the main stage.

Go ahead and judge me. My twenty-year-old self certainly would have.

My overall Bestival experience? Much fun and many memories that are making me laugh out loud right now. I would share them with you, but I'm guessing you had to be there.

*For the Flo fans, I totally get "You've Got the Love" now. I had thought it was a bit of an insipid and unecessary closer to an album full of belters, but no: it's just meant to be played to a field full of happy people who are feeling the love, against a backdrop of the gloriously setting sun.



Our Festival Glossary:

Foldies: The Festival stalwarts. People who attended the original Glastonbury in 1970 and aren't ready to give up the dream. Characterised by long greying hair and doped-up smiles.
Fluts: Festival sluts. Generally wearing tiny shorts and big hair, with rings of dark make-up around the eyes. Working their way up to Groupie.
Eninens: Nice n' normals (that would be us). Like a cider (or a tea), are careful not to tread on anyone, bring their own camp chairs.
Festies: Proper dread-locked, bare-footed hippies with dirt caked under their nails.
Frents: the über-cool parents who bring tiny children along to the festival so that they can learn all about the effects of excessive drinking and drug-taking first hand, while being exposed to the educational ditties of the Klaxons.

Turn the sound up

Way up. Put that cup of tea down, and clear some floor space.



I dare you to listen to this without indulging in a bit of air-drumming and/or dramatic interpretive dancing. And falling a little bit in love with this flame-haired goddess.

Ten songs that turn my brain orange

There has been a lot of scientific yakkety-yak lately about the effect music has on the brain, and it seems that the boffins have discovered that a song will light up some parts of one person's brain and different parts of another person's - possibly indicating that we are predisposed to like a certain kind of music, or suggesting that our reaction to music is biological rather than aesthetic? I'm a little bit hazy on the details, but the idea that "music which produces extreme pleasure, or "chills," activates the reward systems in the brain" chimes with me. Music has been the most constant source of pleasure in my life.

I also love the idea of certain songs turning my brain orange. It makes sense to me (orange is my favourite colour*). These are songs that I loved instantly and fervently upon hearing them for the first time; songs that still give me a shiver of pleasure, everytime.

Feeling Good by Nina Simone: Epic.
Sea Lion Woman by Feist: Frenetic.
Cannon Ball by The Breeders: Delirious.
A-Punk by Vampire Weekend: Infectious.
That Teenage Feeling by Neko Case: Vast.
Play Dead by Björk: Kooky.
Tear In Your Hand by Tori Amos: Interstellar.
Homeward Bound by Simon & Garfunkel: Joyful.
Lilac Wine by Jeff Buckley: Heady.
Vicious World by Rufus Wainwright: Silvery.

*Sometimes. Sometimes it's sunflower yellow; sometimes it's bright kermit green, sometimes it's fuschia. But orange is the colour I am most known for using in my designs, so I guess it is the most favoured of the favourites.

Wherin Mr. Random helps me break out of the female singer/songwriter rut

I have a self-confessed predilection for vocalists of the feminine persuasion - the quirkier and more distinctive her voice, the better - which means that my music collection has always been dominated by women in the past. I love a bluesy, ballsy soul-sister, an alt-country belter, a heart-breaking waif, a gentle folksy gal, a 90's alterna-goddess and a defiantly unclassifiable kook.

Oh, and also the occassional sassy R&B diva to mix things up a bit.

The lyricism of the words is important to me (despite Beyoncé's best efforts), and I'm a sucker for a wrist-slitter no matter the gender of origin; but if these qualities combine with an outstanding female vocalist - ka-ching! - I've hit auditory paydirt.

However, I have been trying to rectify this inherent gender bias* by gradually adding more male artists to my nano by stealth, one album at a time. Last night while walking home in the sweet-smelling wake of a Summer rainshower, Mr. Shuffle selected a gorgeous all-male lineup (albeit including one in particular who is very much in touch with his feminine side), and I loved the unexpected change of tone.

Rain on the Pretty Ones - Ed Harcourt
Your heart is an empty room - Death Cab For Cutie (I have been listening to this a lot recently)
Heretics - Andrew Bird
Nylon instrumental - Scott Matthews
Crown of Love - Arcade Fire
Tiergarten - Rufus Wainwright
Up With People - Lambchop
Two Silver Trees - Calexico (featuring what is surely the prettiest song intro ever)
Theme to Pinata - Bright Eyes
Heartbeat - José González

I think my next musical resolution should probably be: 'listen to less depressing music and see if it a) turns me into the kind of girl who has an "I believe in magic!" sticker on her back window; b) makes me want to smash things; or c) has no discernable impact on my emotional landscape'.

I'll let you know how that goes.

* Actually, I just realised that the last playlist I mentioned was all-male as well - and I didn't even notice it at the time! Perhaps I am more aurally gender-balanced than I thought..?

Music to be miserable to

Courtesy of the shuffle function this morning. As if I wasn't feeling gloomy enough already!

A Glow - Okkervil River
Hope there's someone - Antony & The Johnsons
What Can I Do? - Rufus Wainwright
Around and around - Mark Kozolek
No One's Gonna Love You - Band of Horses

Thank god then for the next selection:

Across The Wire - Calexico
De la Orgee - De La Soul
In the Hot, Hot Rays - Fleet Foxes

Those Fleet Foxes boys - how I love them. Listening to their music is like floating in a pond with that golden, late afternoon sunshine warming your skin - soul-soothing, gentle, uplifting.

Panic on the streets of London

Ups and downs this week, roller-coaster like.

Ups:

Ending up at indie disco Saturday night. Dancing my cons off to all the best stuff from my heyday (the Smiths, the Cure, the Breeders, Pulp, Blur, etc), lots of cool newer stuff (Vampire Weekend, Hot Chip, the Killers and...ermmm a bunch of others I'm not cool enough to know the names of), as well as the odd 80's power ballad to get all melodramatic to. Much fun 'til the early hours of Sunday morning.

Also: laughing at the utterly incongruous sight of a bunch of kids born in the late eighties/early nineties, dressed in full 80's outfits - blazers with huge square shoulder pads, lace leggings, t-shirt dresses, acid wash demin jackets etc. If I was in denial about the 80's revival before, I ain't no more.

The wonderful Australian-barista-ed coffee at my new local funkyplace. Yay!

Getting a bonus set of holiday prints from Jessops 'cos they got my order wrong the first go around and printed them all on gloss paper. I'm a designer people, I will only tolerate matte stock with white borders (I'm snobby like that).

Downs:
My wonderful flatmate of the last 1.5 years moving on. I guess it would be selfish of me to keep her captive (so she can provide me with timely relationship advice, play me her new songs and make me endless cups of Lady Grey) when she could be honing her song-writing skills in Barcelona alongside her lovely Catalan boyfriend. Goddamn him and his Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall-like good looks. (No te creas, Dani!)

Confronting a dude who tried to steal my bike lights (he apologised and gave them back, which was seriously weird/upsetting), only to have them stolen a few days later while I was blissing out at yoga. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

My mum accidentally deleting 6 months worth of emails from my Yahoo account. Arrghh!

Being single again. I have been running slow-jogging just to get my mind off it. Soundtrack kindly provided by Vampire Weekend (perky; may cause involuntary dancing).

Thank you for the music, Mr. Apple

Being more than a little averse to change - and a teensy bit tight-assed - I have been clinging on to my 4 year-old mini under the pretext of preferring it's "retro" stylings to the new slim-line nano. Never mind that my mini's battery life was such that it would spend all day charging from my mac at work, and wouldn't survive the 30 minute bus journey home; or that itunes no longer recognised it, so that my ability to access or update the music has been haphazard for a year - a bit of a problem given my propensity for becoming obsessed with some artist or other, listening to them over and over, then inexplicably tiring of them and tossing them to the bottom of my adoration-heap.

I have been hot and heavy for Fleet Foxes for a while now, but that shows no signs of abating. No, sir.

Last week I was getting frustrated with myself for my general lack of action, and as I couldn't quite work up the courage to book an expensive trip, I decided it was time to at least drop some cash on a new music-machine. A little encouragement from a certain gadget-happy boy in my life, and the deed was done. One 16gb silver magic box in the post, courtesy of amazon.co.uk.

Walking in the early Spring sunshine, plugged into that magic, After Eight sized sliver of a gadget, I was thrilled all over again by the possibilities the ipod presents to your average, everyday music-worshipper. I particularly love it when the shuffle setting seems spookily in sync with your mood:

The Shins - Gone for good
Liz Phair - Whip smart
The Dodos - God?
Bob Dylan - Oh, sister
Sufjan Stevens - John Wayne Gacy, Jr.
Laura Marling - Your only doll (Dora)

Lookout - gig avalanche!

Where to begin? I have so much gig-ly goodness booked for the next few months, just flicking through the dates marked in my diary is giving me an anticipatory thrill. I had promised myself that I would start going out and seeing more stuff in London after I had such a wonderful time making the most of New York. In reality, I have been struggling to settle back in, and as a consequence I just haven't had sufficient motivation to get myself out there.

But now I'm back baby - or at least on the way back to usual capacity. I have been feeling the faintest blush of optimism recently, and oh my goodness that is certainly welcome after so many up-and-down months, lightened only by a wonderful couple of weeks with my parents.

But enough about me! Onto the fun stuff!

Murray from Flight of the Conchords (otherwise known as Rhys Darby) at the Riverside Studios. Gentle, funny, and a little bit geeky. Not actually that far off Murray then. But where poor Murray is a bit of a loser, Rhys is definitely a winner, or a wunner as he would say in his charming New Zealand accent. FOTC has given me a much greater appreciation of all things from that exotic land; and I was most impressed to see that the New Zealand consulate had booked the first two rows and a special place at the bar for pre-gig drinks. They must be fun to work for.

Rhys has some killer sound effects up his sleeves, and uses them to great effect in describing exactly how much of a geek he was as a kid. Who needs friends when you have your own jetpack? In fact, who needs a girlfriend when you can have weird, bubbly underwater sex with a mermaid in Brighton?

The Mighty Boosh at the Brixton Academy. So, so much fun; like a glam rock concert but with comedy and even more outrageous costumes. This was two hours of the most joyous, raucous, shambolic mahem I am ever likely to witness. It was worth it just to see Bob Fossil in pink spandex (over his zoo-keepers outfit, obviously), teaching the audience some new dance moves. And for the sight of Noel clad in scandalously short gold loincloth, blonde wig, silver breastplate and angel wings during a hilarious routine contrasting Vince's electro-glam vision of the future with Howard's bleak apocalyptic one.

The boisterous crowd obviously shared the boys' enthusiasm for a bit of creative costuming, and had devoted many happy hours - sewing machine and glue-gun in hand - to putting together some fabulous outfits in homage to the show's characters. There was a lady in a mirror-ball suit, a scarily realistic crack fox, many Hitchers, and a few Old Gregs (male and female, appropriately).

I was so caught up in the excitement, I bought my first ever tour T-shirt!



Luka Bloom at Bush Hall. Any boys who may be reading this, listen up (read up?), because I won't repeat this. If you ever want to seduce a lady-friend, take her to a Luka gig - preferably in a beautiful old-timey hall of intimate proportions. Trust me on this.

The most enduring impression I had was of a man utterly suffused with his music; radiant with love for his fellow man (or more likely, his fellow woman), doing what he was born to do. His guitar is so much a part of him, it is like a beating wooden heart sitting against his chest, producing the most wonderful silvery sounds. And then there's his voice - rich and warm and flowing like a river (except when he's berating the audience for sitting down at the front like it was "feckin' woodstock"). Sorry, Luka!

I must confess, I don't know much of his back catalogue, but every song was a joy to listen to. I particularly enjoyed the stunningly lovely Joy of Living, the "one people" message of Tribe, and Sunny Sailor Boy with the crowd singing along to the chorus in hushed tones.

The Acoustic Motorbike, a rythmic ode to the benefits of cycling, is my new riding anthem. Not that I listen to my ipod when I ride (do I look like a suicidal bike-courier?), but this will definitely be running through my head as I pedal on, pedal on through the streets of London, not quite "the Kerry mountains or the Wicklow hills", but possibly "the antidote to my emotional ills".

As for his rendition of Monsoon, well, let's just say any bloke who takes his lady-friend to see this performed live is guaranteed to be struggling to get his coat on and running to keep up with his woman the minute the gig ends.

Things I learned about classical music (from watching one performance by the London Philharmonic Orchestra)

The clarinet is the most melancholy of all the instruments.
Flutes are the most light-hearted.
French horns sound impending doom.
Trumpets add a sense of urgency.

The organ is so large, it is easy to overlook. The effect is one of your vision zooming out in stages, so that you take in one set of pipes before realising there is an even bigger set next to them; and a truly epic set right next to those. Also, the organist gets to sit with his back to everybody, including the conductor, so he has two special little TV screens to keep him in the loop. Neat (in both senses of the word).

The trombonists generally just sit there looking portly.
The violinists are the most numerous and noticably busy of all the instrumentalists.

The solo soprano gets to upstage everybody else in sartorial terms - think cherry red, floor length show-stopper with plunging neckline and a train trailing obsequious in her wake.

The conductors's hands float in an hypnotic yet unpredictable way, like the flight path of a butterfly. At times they seem to be plucking grapes from an imaginary vine; at others, daintily hanging invisible washing on an invisible line. Sometimes they describe the shape of a particularly voluptuous woman; sometimes they repeatedly open and draw a set of invisible curtains; and occassionally, they seem to calm a particularly volatile (but once again, invisible) horse.

I must admit my mind was wandering by this stage.

And finally - it is innapropriate to whistle after an orchestral performance: even if you know one of the members of the choir. He just won't appreciate it and neither will your white-haired neighbours in the audience.

I saw Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, just so you don't think I am a complete philistine.

Fink broods; Liz Phair talks dirty

First up: Fink. I saw the man play at the supremely wonderful Joe's Pub recently. It was good to break out of my usual female singer/songwriter rut, and I must say, sitting only a few feet away from him as I was, I was a little taken with his unapologetically masculine presence on the stage. He struck me as a staunchly old-school bloke - the anti-metrosexual if you like - with his shorn head, wiry form, beer-swilling, anti-fashion uniform of grey sweat top and dirty grey jeans and occassional self-conscious "nice one". His lyrics are (in keeping with his sartorial style) simple and direct, tending towards the everyday - being late for work, buying maple syrup from Asda (or not), perving at girls (in the sexy sexy Pretty Little Thing) - but his voice and guitar playing elevate the songs to another level altogether. Deep, bruising and hypnotic. Shudder. Catch him live if you can; some of his magic is lost in the recording process.

Then there is Ms Liz Phair: a pint-sized dynamo striding the stage at the Hiro Ballroom in leather vest, hotpants and cork wedges. How rock and roll is that?!

I love Liz for the honesty in her music and voice, her brazen sexuality and the f*ck-you attitude that has gotten her into trouble on more than one occassion. This gig was a celebration of the re-release of Exile in Guyville, with Liz and her all-male back up rocking through every song on the album - from 6ft 1in to Strange Loop. I have to confess, despite the fact that Supernova was one song guaranteed to get me on the dance floor in the 90's (the others were Sabotage and Connection), the first album I bought of hers was the comparitively mild-mannered Somebody's Miracle, and that was only a few years ago. However, it was interesting enough that I have been catching up on her past releases ever since.

This gig was my first introduction to Exile, so unlike many devout fans in the crowd, I couldn't sing along rapturously. However, as an Exile-virgin, the stand-out songs for me were (typically) the slower, sadder ones: Glory, Dance of the Seven Veils, Canary, Girls! Girls! Girls!, and Gunshy; and then there was the dirty shock of Flower (whoa momma!) and of course the infamous Fuck and Run.

Lord, why did no one introduce me to this - the ultimate collection of pissed off break-up songs - when I was 23 and torn up with misdirected anger and confusion?

Both Liz and Fink mentioned how great it was to be in New York, and how much they loved the New York crowds; and both mentioned previous lacklustre gigs in Chicago (Liz) and Pittsburgh (Fink). Sadly, my time in New York will shortly be at an end.

Damn, I'm going to miss this town.